Cycling UK Forum

To try and drum up a little support for my forth coming tour of the Americas, in aid of Macmillan Cancer Research, I have cobbled togeather this little game to keep your fingers twitching in these cold winter months.

www.thehungrycyclist.com/game

Try an avoid the cactus, llamas and sleeping mexicans and if you have time and know of any good places to grab a meal on my route, do let me lnow and have a peep at my site.

www.thehungrycyclist.com

Stay hungry

Tom

The Hungry Cyclist

Kerry,
Get a copy of Chelmsford council's map, "Get on your bike and cycle around Chelmsford".
This shows that you can cycle from the town centre on shared tarmac footpath/cycleways:
1 West to Writtle Ag Coll and St John's Green. The western km of this is new and might not be on their map.
2 North, the Chelmer valley to Valley Bridge Rd.
3 West to Chelmer Village.
On each of these you can see ducks and swans and the occasional Great Crested Grebe.
Look at www.sustrans.org.uk. There is a linear cycleway on the old railway out of Braintree. I don't know what the surface is like.

Spen, your last paragraph mentions a lack of thought for others, that is exactley the problem, coupled with the fact that when a person gets behind the wheel of a car their whole personality changes, and they become extremely jealous about other road users gaining one inch further in the traffic than them, God forbid you cycle past them, either on their inside or legally on the offside, plus a lot of them are fat lazy ******** who think they own the road.

I have had some thoughts on this recently.
I am planning a month tour through Belgium and France then through to Jersey and back on into London.
My father (coming with me) is going to be using the standard Michelin map...so we are not too worried if my idea does not work...too a degree.
I decided to purchase a GPS bluetooth receiver and software and load it onto a PDA that I bought as well. While this does seem quite expensive it does have a number of advantages. If you get a PDA that doubles as a cell phone you kill two devices with one. You can then load the PDA with the GPS software and a couple of memory cards with all the maps you will need. You also then can of course get route instructions to places/areas if you enter a tricky bit (like an industrial site when you take the wrong turn!). I have a 1GB memory card and have loaded it with more maps than I can see myself using. The GPS unit takes rechargeable batteries...the only down side of a GPS unit of course and the PDA!

Not sure of your time-frame - but am happy to post more comments here as I experiment.

Cheers,
Craig.

Old, obsolete sizes of tyre are unfortunately the sort of thing most people will only spend a small amount of money on, in order to keep an old bike on the road, so it's not that attractive to the mail-order firms and more Halfords stock-in-trade, so best try there. Failing that, you need the sort of relationship with your local lightweight dealer that makes it worth his while to place an unprofitable special order with a supplier he maybe doesn't normally use.

32-597 (26×1¼) tyres are still made, but only basic quality by only a few firms. 26×1.25, by the way, denotes a completely different size, 32-559, that is readily available.

Helmets, without doubt, are trouble magnets! Every one I know who wears a helmet has had a serious accident. I went climbing once in The Isle of Sky and only one of us was wearing a helmet, whilst sitting on a ledge eating our butties, a large rock bounced down the cliff and hit our hatted friend square on the bonce.
Another time we were proceeding down a hill, and all three of my armoured headed friends slipped on a manhole cover & disappeared into a large rhubarb patch on the other side of the wall (snigger).
Yet again while descending into Reeth having had a pint or two at that noble Tavern known as Tan Hill, my polystyrene protected companion lost touch with the tarmac and tested the cheese grater properties of a newly surfaced road.
'I’ in the best of health, accompanied my concused and damaged mate back in the ambulance, and had to spend the next twenty miles listening to the lady paramedic trying to tell ‘me’ how silly I was not being helmeted, sadly my statistics fell on brainwashed ears. I spent the rest of the afternoon in the hospital being berated by every passing nurse as I sat next to my friend who was bearing painful testament to what a helmet can do.
On a ride while actually wearing the appropriate head gear a wasp flew into the front slots & I almost rode into the wall trying to get the dam contraption off .
To ride un hatted makes a chap very aware of his vulnerability and hence take more notice of road conditions. I’ll wear a helmet in a large group or ‘off road’ because there’s more things out of your control, but on my own or with only a couple of us Ill stick to letting the wind blow through where my hair use to be, and if I do fall off and bang my nut, It’ll be my fault & my head.

I was cycling fairly regularly, out on club runs, to about 6 months. I could probably have carried on another month or so, but happened to not have any weekends free. After that, I found I could not get on and off my large diamond frame bike. I did a few very, very short rides, just up and down the road, late on, with a smaller bike, which I found an enjoyable form of gentle exercise.
You get so that you are very, very slow on the uphills, and you keep wanting to stop and go to the loo, and you go rather fast downhill - a toptube comes in handy here for resting the bump on. You also do not want to strain yourself with lugging eg over stiles etc. Your wife has probably worked all this out by now.
Broadly, your assumption of common sense is correct. I would not advise anyone to start cycling when pregnant, but those of us who are cyclists already have no problems continuing until sheer physical impossibilty comes into play.
There is the story of course of the woman who cycled down to the hospital in labour, remembered she'd left toothbrush behind, cycled back to get it, returned to hospital and had the baby. This may be apocraphyl.

I was cycling fairly regularly, out on club runs, to about 6 months. I could probably have carried on another month or so, but happened to not have any weekends free. After that, I found I could not get on and off my large diamond frame bike. I did a few very, very short rides, just up and down the road, late on, with a smaller bike, which I found an enjoyable form of gentle exercise.
You get so that you are very, very slow on the uphills, and you keep wanting to stop and go to the loo, and you go rather fast downhill - a toptube comes in handy here for resting the bump on. You also do not want to strain yourself with lugging eg over stiles etc. Your wife has probably worked all this out by now.
Broadly, your assumption of common sense is correct. I would not advise anyone to start cycling when pregnant, but those of us who are cyclists already have no problems continuing until sheer physical impossibilty comes into play.
There is the story of course of the woman who cycled down to the hospital in labour, remembered she'd left toothbrush behind, cycled back to get it, returned to hospital and had the baby. This may be apocraphyl.

Dave, are you really a cyclist?, it strikes me on the morning you pulled out on another road user i.e Cyclist, you were on another planet, " blind spot!!, door pillar!! look where the F**k youre going!!!!!especially in your metal killing machine!

Leave Waterloo via the big memorial arch to where the taxis are, there is a purpose built cycle lane, leading you down a ramp, cycle across the lights on york road, go across and into concert hall approach.

If you are unfamiliar with London, this brings you onto the South Bank, next to the Royal Festival Hall. Turn roughly right, keeping the Thames on your left, you are allowed to cycle along here, being considerate to the pedestrians. Keep on heading along the river, following the thames path until you come to Drakes Galleon, the Golden Hind.

You should hit cobbles now, keep as close to the river as possible until you come onto Montague Street.

London Bridge arches over your head at this point, to your left are 'Nancys Steps'.

Climb up these with your cycle if you can, and cycle north across London Bridge. At the far side there is a filter lane left, avoid this, head straight ahead, you will bear slightly right, but DO NOT turn right.

You are now heading toward Bishopsgate.

After 2-300 meters Liverpool Street should be on your left.

You can avoid the steps at London Bridge by going UNDER the bridge, then turning right at the next junction into Tooley street, then turning right again at the lights onto London Bridge.

Easyjet and most other airlines now do require the bikes to be covered somehow and to answer this need I have sourced for the CTC shop a supply of large poly bags like those British Airways used to hand out. The shop product code is CT224 (we don't have a picture up there yet) and the price is £4, supply your own parcel tape.

We've generally found a clear poly bag gives the least encouragement to chuck the bike around or (the problem with a big box) put it at the bottom of a stack of smaller but much heavier items, whilst protecting other passengers' luggage from a dirty, oily bike - the whole good reason for this new insistence.

You will need to put your bike inside a bike bag.If you go to the s.n.c.f website choose the english version and book it through the website or phone eurorail a london based company on 08705848848 and there will book it

Hi I use GPS all the time, but I favour the Garmin I do have a PDA with O/S map on it but it is not very robust drop it and bang goes £200-300 at least the Garmin can take a bit of a knock. I if were you go for a Garmin with the road maps of Europe can't go wrong, and you can do all your routes ect on your deck top PC and them download it on to your GPS.
Some of the cheaper ones only work on waypoints there OK but the map ones are so much easier to use and as you ride you can watch the map unfold and with out stopping

Do any readers have good recommendations for information about cycling while pregnant - or your own stories? My partner is going into the second trimester of her pregnancy and we regularly go touring and would like to carry on doing so. Are there any pros and cons / things to watch out for, other than what common sense says...? Thanks.

I'd recommend thorn. My brevet is fantastic and within your price range. I got the size wrong (took my boyfriends advice) and soon found out that it wasnt comfy. Took it to thorn who measured me properly and swaped it for the right size at no cost. I have had it three years and couldn't want a better bike however much money I had.